Introduction to Biological Weapons

BIOTERRORBIBLE.COM:
The Sunshine Project was a foundation funded program that existed in
Europe and the United States from 2000 until 2008. While its purpose was never
clearly defined, it acted as a source of information in respect to the highly
illegal and highly unethical scientific practices occurring in the field of
microbiology, specifically in bio-terror and bio-weapons research. The Sunshine
Project will likely be trotted out in the media post pandemic to shine light on
(demonize and blame) the United States for ultimately allowing an environment
of underground bio-related research to flourish.

Disclaimer: As of 1 February 2008, the Sunshine Project is suspending its operations. Although this website is no longer
updated, it remains online as an archive of our activities and
publications from 2000 through 2008. If you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail at tsp@sunshine-project.org.
Thank you for your interest. Introduction to Biological WeaponsBiological
weapons, also called bioweapons, are nearly as old as war. In Roman times,
wells were poisoned. Two hundred years ago in North America, the British
Army attacked Native Americans by using smallpox-infected
blankets. In World War II, the Japanese Army used bioweapons on a large
scale in China. As disturbing as these cases are, on the other hand, the
history of biowarfare (see graphic) can also be interpreted as history of
the non-use. Few large scale deployments in wartime
have happened.

A major reason
is the obvious technical difficulty and the "boomerang effect" that bioweapons can have .
Handling and using contagious diseases poses a threat of infection to an
aggressor´s own soldiers and population. It is also technically challenging
to develop biowarfare agents for large scale
use. A relatively sophisticated microbiology is needed to isolate and grow
microbes in a reliable manner, and to develop the special means of delivery, such as aerosol
techniques, that must be available.

After World
War II and through the 1960s, only a few countries - including the UK and
the USA - maintained major offensive biowarfare programs and generated the
knowledge and the technical means to produce and use biological weapons.
When these countries decided to stop their programs, it paved the way for
the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)
of 1972, which bans the development or production of biological agents
for non-peaceful purposes.

The biotechnology
revolution increased the biowarfare threat in the past decades. Genetically
engineered bioweapons sound like science fiction, but are already a
deadly reality: lethal microbes, with no cure, invisible to detection systems,
and able to overcome vaccines have been reported in scientific publications.
In "defensive" programs, researchers in the USA, UK, Russia, Germany
and other countries have genetically engineered biological weapons agents,
building new deadly strains. For example, the German Army experimented with
tularemia bacteria – a standard bioweapon agent – which was genetically
engineered to resist antibiotic treatment.

Biotechnology
also allows to build completely new types of biological weapons. Since the
end of the Cold War, types of conflicts and military interventions have
changed. Ethnic conflicts have flared, as have conflicts between the West
and "rogue states". Some peacekeeping missions, claims of extraterritorial
jurisdiction and, above all, the Drug War, have blurred the line between
law enforcement and military action. In response to these newly prominent
types of conflicts, new types of armaments have been developed or proposed,
including biological weapons.

Recently, US
military officials have called for a renegotiation of the Biological and
Toxin Weapons

Convention
to enable the development of gas-guzzling bacteria to curtail an enemy's
mobility. Material-degrading microorganisms are already under development,
again in "defensive" mode. One of the most advanced threats to
the global consensus against biological weapons is the attempt to deploy
biological agents in forced drug eradication ("Agent
Green"). Fungi that attack drug-producing plants have been developed
to use against coca, cannabis and opium poppy.

These agents
are lowering the political threshold for use of biological weapons and are
likely to have tremendous environmental and health impacts. Pursuit of crop-killing
fungi or materiel-degrading microbes as weapons would be a step down a slippery
slope, that, following the same logic, could easily lead to the use of other
plant pathogens, animal pathogens, or even non-lethal biological weapons
against humans.

Verification
of the BTWC is especially difficult because bioweapons research is beset
with the problem of dual-use technology. Nearly
all the know-how and equipment necessary for an offensive biological warfare
program has applicability to civilian medical or biological research. A
very thin line separates offense and defense bioweapons research. Also biodefense
research can be problematic as in many cases defensive work generates
an offensive capability. To test a cure for smallpox, mice and primates
must be infected with virulent strains of smallpox.

While the BTWC
is very broad and unambiguous in its prohibition of all biological weapons,
it lacks any provisions to verify the countries are in compliance. At the
beginning of the 1990s, it became apparent that the former Soviet Union,
Iraq (information
on Iraq's program from FAS) and the former Apartheid regime in South
Africa engaged in offensive warfare programs.

These revelations
were instrumental in triggering negotiations for a legally
binding Protocol to strengthen the Convention. The Protocol would provide
for verification measures such as laboratory inspections and export notifications.
The goal was to complete the negotiations before the 5th
Review Conference of the BTWC convenes in Geneva in November 2001, but
the new US Administration does not support the protocol, casting doubt on
its future.